The opening sentences of the "history" section:

<The match between Adolph Anderssen and William Steinitz was played in London, during July and August 1866, and is now commonly considered as marking the beginning of Steinitz's reign as World Chess Champion. Officially, however, this title was not then in existence, the first match officially played for the title being between Steinitz and Zukertort in 1866.>

The final paragraph in the book, after the final game: <With this match, William Steinitz came to be recognized, unofficially at least, as World Champion. It was not long before he was referred to as such in the chess literature. Steinitz was to retain his crown for 28 years (longer than any other champion), finally relinquishing it to the young German master, Emanuel Lasker, in 1894.>

For example, the following urls take you directly to graphs of the player's full rating history:

Magnus Carlsen
http://www.chessgraphs.com/?name%5B...

Wesley So
http://www.chessgraphs.com/?name%5B...

Fabiano Caruana
http://www.chessgraphs.com/?name%5B...

This website is still relatively new so not all have heard about it, but it seems to be the best way on the internet to find any chess player's FIDE rating history. No login is required, and you can also put multiple players on a graph to compare them. For example here's Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin compared:

http://www.chessgraphs.com/?name%5B...

Graphs like that are good for making some historical observations. In this case you see that Karjakin was actually the higher-rated prodigy till mid-2006.

Chessgraphs.com has rating histories for all FIDE rated players, and there's an autocomplete in the search field for all titled players. The data goes back to the earliest international ratings in 1967.

Yury Shulman

who runs educational sessions:

http://shulmanchess.com/ (in US since '99)

A few posts back I revealed that after years of researching, including bribing and blackmailing every official I could find, that Edwatd Winter was in fact Bill Hartson. It ran on from there here.

I recently discovered this.

A 1916 postcard from Capablanca to Alekhine thanking him for warning about him about the pawn sac for Black in the Lopez. (the one Marsahll used v Capa a few years later)

Obviously this 'Brush Script' was based on Capablanca's hand writing.

I gave the post card to Edward Winter and he confirmed it is Capa's.

Suddenly, it all makes sense.

Or bizarre posts about Edward Winter.

Half apologies from yours truly.

Dang it, there goes another one of my illusions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XA...

This is episode 1, and starting with Steinitz.

<Thorold, Edmund - BCM v19 (Aug 1899) p341.png>

Goggle translate - subject is Lasker's double-bishop sac:

<The search for the second, older predecessor NN-De Vere, London 1867 was more difficult. After a long time I searched for help, on the one hand in the forum Schachfeld.de (see here ), and on the other hand in "British Chess Magazine" (see here ). Finally, Andrew Soltis had written in his book that 2003 had been reported about the two predecessors. "They were little known until recently in the British Chess Magazine 2003." (see here - where the entire section on the subject is quoted from Soltis book)

The response from Steve Giddins, the chief editor of the BCM, came quickly. He kindly sent the exact sources as well as the notation of the part NN-De Vere 1867. It was a specification part played in the "Westminster Chess Club" (without black kingpringer), the two authors of the book "The English Morphy? The Life and Games of Cecil De Vere, first British Chess Champion ", Owen Hindle and Bob Jones, in" The Field 14 ix 1867 ".

The chess game of "The Field" was then supervised by Samuel Boden (see here ), a teacher and sponsor De Veres (see here ). This perhaps explains how the remarkable pre-selection part came into the magazine. Two years later, 1869, (according to other data only 1872 - see here ), Boden gave the column to De Vere, who supervised it until 1872. Then, by the way, she took over Wilhelm Steinitz (see here ). In any case, the play was printed in the December 2003 edition of the British Chess Magazine on page 666, in the column "Quotes and Queries column" as "Q & Q 9659", which I believe Edward Winter was currently managing .>

So, of course the Field is a likely suspect. By way maybe of Hindle & Jones:

<"The English Morphy? The Life and Games of Cecil De Vere, first British Chess Champion ">

<This Congress, the last major achievement of the BCA, was ambitiously organized, with three tournaments .... Although ... better documented than the miserable 1870 Challenge Cup, there was yet again no contemporary book. Consequently, games were scattered through several publications, in many cases with imperfect info ... Reconstructing these tournaments is peculiarly difficult because two major tournaments ran simultaneously without a fixed [schedule]"> p86

He refers to Gillam, of course, with a couple minor quibbles. There is mention of a microfilmed scrapbook of Field columns (where Gillam credits Boden when it was De Vere). etc. etc.